Video Transcript
Hi, it’s David Patmore here from CAL Corporate Solutions with a quick technique from one of our workshops called ‘The Remote Communicator’.
One of the biggest challenges when leading a hybrid or remote team can be the impact of communication. Certainly it can create some of the following issues, if not managed properly, and can be frustrating when you’re trying to move the team forwards. For example, general misunderstanding and miscommunication, feelings of disconnection and isolation. Or we might have some snapshot communication with some of the missing context, like edited parts of communication where people start to make assumptions which can cause other issues.
Certainly the lack of physical relationship can create a lack of openness and trust issues. There can be an impact to the organic collaboration of the team not having that spontaneous synergy that you get in the physical environment. The other thing can be digital literacy issues.
So, one tool that you can use to reduce or eliminate some of these communications issues is to create a clear communication blueprint for the team. A good communication blueprint will generally cover some practical areas. So here are four areas that I can use as a suggestion you could cover.
One of those things would be the general standards and expectations. In other words, the cultural protocols or the conduct that is expected within a remote environment. Most importantly, the expectations of communication regularity, so that people aren’t in the dark or maybe guessing how often they need to communicate. Some people in a remote environment can tend to disengage, creating a expectation or regularity is really important.
The second thing is the tools and methods and their best practice use. Often it’s important because we communicate out of a level of convenience more often than the best method, what’s easiest for us, in other words. In a remote and a hybrid environment where there’s a larger reliance on things like conversation and chat tools and other methods that we use, really important to perhaps build some framework of what the expectation of standards are around those tools and when not to use them.
So for example, if you had to deal with a more sensitive issue, rather than trying to deal with it over a chat, it might be better to have, say, a Zoom or a Microsoft Teams, if you use that tool, so that you can see the tone or hear the tone and see the body language more easily. So just some practical, common sense things that you would build into the blueprint.
The next thing is probably the most important thing is the team touchpoint regularity. When you’re in a hybrid and remote environment, one of the first things that we know goes is the ability to have that spontaneous or natural organic interaction. Creating specific points where the team can actually have some open sharing and can have some feedback that they can rely upon helps to really compensate for that sense of community and tribe that they might be missing from the physical environment.
If this is done regularly, then people can start to have confidence and rely upon the fact that their issues or challenges can be aired in an environment that’s specifically purpose for that. They might be need to be facilitated, those sessions, obviously, to keep them moving in the right direction with a framework of how they need to be conducted, but it’s really important to maintain, to compensate that whole sense of open sharing that you get often in the physical environment.
The last one is the support or how you support digital literacy skills, and this is really useful because not everyone is at the same level, and we know that in a remote and a hybrid environment that digital literacy or largely written skills go up or are increased to 75% when it comes to reliance. So it’s really important that if not everyone’s at the same level, to actually have the pathways that people can access in how they can increase their skills, or how they can develop their digital literacy and what they can do. Whether that’s mentoring or coaching or obviously training sessions are all important to have in that blueprint.
There’s a few ideas that you can use for remote communication, and I certainly hope that that was of value for you and there were some practical things there.
So thanks for watching and bye for now.